from what i gather, shah is a delusional, paranoid, narcissistic psychopath who suffered ptsd from the failed hijacking and lost herself in a constructed myth (with rima’s help)
the whole deal with kale being okay with the kashmirian whacking his childhood friends is because he believes they are deluded by their own pr: shah as royalty and dawood hinting he is the maelstrom via his films (kale thinks he’s above it, but he says a few things that suggest even he has fallen for his own bullshit).
part of why i love chasing a ghost so much is how well the geography reflects the targets’ inner workings.
take dawood as a quick example: his tower is flashy, half-empty (wazir calls him a ‘hollow man’ at one point), full of images of himself and pompous decorations and furnishes, has a film set telling apocryphal stories about himself, and it is all situated high above everyone else. that’s dawood written in architecture, man.
now, if we apply that thinking to vanya, we see she lives on the same level as the citizens of mumbai, though she has retreated to an out of the way, imposing, decaying, overgrown train station no longer directly connected to the main line (if that’s not an on-the-nose physical representation of her mental disconnection from reality, i don’t know what is). inside is an almost otherworldly realm, sprouting with life and colour and brutally enforced fantastical courtly rituals; a reflection of her rich but ultimately deranged inner-life.
she cray.